


Scary Stories

by Sauronix



Series: Nix's Halloween Collection [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Camping, Explicit Language, Friendship, Gen, Ghost Stories, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mentions of Suicide, Mild Horror, Personal Ghost Stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 09:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16426685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sauronix/pseuds/Sauronix
Summary: Noct puts down his cards. “What do you want to do, Iris?”Iris brings the tip of her index finger to her chin, her face scrunching as she thinks. Then she claps her hands together, excited, her eyes brightening in the dancing firelight. “I know! Let’s tell ghost stories!”Gladio groans. “Nuh-uh. No way. Been through this with you before. You’ll get too scared to sleep.”“Oh, come on, Gladdy, I was eight last time that happened.”The boys tell Iris ghost stories around the campfire.





	Scary Stories

“This game is boring.” Iris throws down her hand of cards. It scatters over the hard-packed dirt of the haven floor, narrowly missing the campfire. “Is this all you guys do?”  
  
“Ain’t much else _to_ do out here. Can’t leave the haven ‘cause of daemons. Can’t makes ‘smores ‘cause Iggy forgot the marshmallows. Can’t drink ‘cause you’re here,” Gladio says. He stretches out next to her and lifts her cards for a look, grinning when he sees what she’s working with. “Now I get it. Crappy hand, kiddo.”  
  
Iris crosses her arms, huffing. “You guys play this all the time. I don’t know the rules. It’s not fair.”  
  
“We did explain them to you before we started,” Ignis says lightly.  
  
Noct puts down his cards, too. “What would you rather do, Iris?”  
  
Iris brings the tip of her index finger to her chin, her face scrunching as she thinks. Then she claps her hands together, excited, her eyes brightening in the dancing firelight. “I know! Let’s tell ghost stories!”  
  
Gladio groans. “Nuh-uh. No way. Been through this with you before. You’ll get too scared to sleep.”  
  
“Oh, come on, Gladdy, I was eight last time that happened.”  
  
“Yeah, and you came cryin’ to me in the middle of the night. I didn’t get a wink of sleep.”  
  
Iris huffs again. “Gladdy! I’m fifteen now. I’m not a kid.”  
  
A breath of cool wind rushes over the campsite, guttering the flames of their fire. It lifts Iris’s scattered cards and carries them, tumbling, over the edge of the haven, into the darkness beyond. Prompto shouts and scrambles up to chase them, dropping the box of graham crackers he was holding, but they’re already long gone. At this hour, it would be too dangerous to abandon the haven to retrieve them.  
  
“Leave them,” Ignis says, waving a hand. “We can pick up another deck when we stop at a Coernix Station tomorrow.”  
  
Prompto sighs and shuffles back to the campfire, dropping into his chair next to Noct. Ignis starts to collect all their cards, tapping them neatly into a pile before sliding the deck back into the box, which he tosses onto the table where he prepared their supper earlier.  
  
Iris looks at Noct. “Can we?”  
  
Noct looks at Iris, then at Gladio. “It’s up to you, big guy.”  
  
“Pleaaaase?” Iris begs, giving Gladio her best puppy-dog eyes.  
  
Gladio grumbles and pokes at the campfire with a stick. It snaps and crackles, sending sparks up into the night air. “Fine, but I ain’t sharing my sleeping bag if you have nightmares. You’ll have to ask Iggy instead.”  
  
“I beg your pardon?” Ignis says, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“Yay! Thank you, Gladdy!” Iris claps again in delight. “So who wants to go first?”  
  
They all look at each other, none of them particularly eager to break the ice. As a rule, they don’t tell ghost stories around the campfire. There’s little need. They’ve come face to face with far worse things than restless spirits over the course of their travels.  
  
Finally, Noct shrugs. “Guess I’ll go first.” Iris turns her eyes on him expectantly, and he cracks his knuckles one by one. “You ever heard the story about the lady in white who roams the Citadel roof?”  
  
When they all look at him blankly, he continues: “According to urban legend, there was an old king who was killed in battle a few weeks before he was supposed to get married. Apparently his bride-to-be was so broken up about it that she put on her wedding dress and threw herself off the roof. Whenever it rains, people say you can see her wandering the rooftop, reliving her last tragic moments.”  
  
A log on the fire pops. When it becomes apparent that Noct has nothing further to add to his story, Prompto throws a graham cracker at him.  
  
“Come on, dude, that was lame,” he says.  
  
Noct scowls, shoving the cracker in his mouth. “I don’t know any other ghost stories,” he says, spraying crumbs down his front.  
  
“I got one,” Gladio interjects. “Well, I dunno if it’s really a ghost story, but it happened when Cor took me and a few other Crownsguard trainees out camping.”  
  
“Are you sure it’s wise to tell this story while we’re at a haven?” Ignis asks.  
  
“It’s fine. Tell it!” Iris says.  
  
“This happened a few years back,” Gladio says. “I was maybe…seventeen? Eighteen? The Marshal took ten of us camping at some haven in the middle of nowhere Duscae. I think we got there around four in the afternoon. Can’t remember all the details, but I do remember sunlight dancin’ on the floor of the haven and songbirds chirpin’ in the trees.”  
  
“Wow,” Noct says. “Songbirds. Scary.”  
  
Gladio ignores him. “I pitched the tents—three of ‘em—with a girl named Martina. Now, I tried to make small talk, but Martina wasn’t having it. She kept looking around, frowning so hard her face was all scrunched up like a bulldog’s, and giving me one-word answers. I figured it didn’t matter much if she was antisocial, as long as she could hammer the pegs in right.  
  
“After we set up camp, we went swimming and fishing at the lake nearby.” He tosses a twig into the fire, his eyes trained on the flames. “It was late when we got back. The sun was a burning stripe over the mountains in the west. Cor fired up the camping stove and showed us how to cook the fish we caught. Everyone was talking and laughing, but something felt…off.”  
  
Gladio raises his eyes to look at Iris. “Martina was sitting across from me, all wrapped up in Cor’s flannel blanket. But she wasn’t joining in the fun. She was still looking around like she expected something to pop out of the bushes and kill us all on the spot. Honestly, she was starting to give me the creeps.”  
  
Noct raises an eyebrow. “You? Creeped out? Can’t picture it.”  
  
“Tell me about it.” Gladio smirks. “Anyway, Martina caught me looking, so I asked her what was wrong. She shook her head and glanced at the woods and said she felt like someone was watching us. I kind of laughed at that. There was no one around except us and a few herds of anak stags. I told her as much, but she shook her head again and didn’t say anything else.  
  
“The wind started to pick up, so Cor left the fire to burn itself out and we all climbed into our tents. I was with Martina and another guy. We changed by the light of a solar-powered lantern, then got in our sleeping bags. I could hear people talking in the other tents, but they slowly quieted down. Pretty soon, there was silence. And I mean silence.”  
  
Ignis sips from his coffee mug. “I take it you mean the sort that heralds danger.”  
  
Gladio winks at him. “Bingo. Usually you hear crickets and animals prowling around in the bush. There was none of that. The other guy in the tent started snoring a little, but I couldn’t sleep. I don’t think Martina could, either. I kept thinking about what she said out by the campfire—that she felt like we were bein’ watched. I was starting to feel it too.”  
  
“You let yourself get worked up by some paranoid chick?” Noct interjects.  
  
“Shhh,” Iris says, smacking him in the knee with the back of her hand. “You’re ruining the suspense.”  
  
“I think I must’ve drifted a little, ‘cause I jolted awake when Martina grabbed my arm.” Gladio clasps his hands in his lap and looks at the fire, all traces of humour leaving his face. “I started to ask her what the hell her problem was, but she shushed me and told me to listen. I don’t think I so much as breathed. For a few seconds, there was just that godawful silence. Figured she must’ve had a nightmare, and was gonna tell her so when I heard it.” The campfire gutters again in the breeze. Gladio pauses, frowning, before he continues. “It sounded like someone was slowly dragging their nails across the outer wall of our tent, along the side closest to the guy we were bunking with.”  
  
“No!” Iris shrieks, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them.  
  
“Yeah,” Gladio shoots back, “and I knew you’d be scared if I told you this story. Maybe I should leave it there.”  
  
“I’m not scared, Gladdy,” she insists. “Come on. Tell the rest. Did you go outside to see what it was?”  
  
Gladio huffs out a little laugh. “Not at first. I thought it was someone from another tent messing with us. I yelled at them to screw off, but Martina said something that still gives me the creeps to this day.”  
  
“And what was that?” Ignis asks.  
  
“She said there weren’t any footsteps. And she was right. If it was someone from another tent, I would’ve heard twigs cracking and shoes shuffling in the dirt. But it was dead quiet out there.”  
  
Prompto leans forward in his chair. “Was it an animal?”  
  
“Any animal big enough to scratch the tent at that height would’ve made other noises, too,” Gladio says, shaking his head.  
  
“What about a daemon?” Iris asks.  
  
“Nah. Daemons can’t come into havens. Besides, it was too deliberate. When it got to the end of one wall, there was a little pause before it started up on the next. It went around and around like that. I was too scared to leave my sleeping bag.” He glances at Noct. “Some Shield I am, huh?”  
  
Noct just shrugs. “I would’ve crapped my pants.”  
  
“Did you try to wake the other individual in your tent?” Ignis asks.  
  
“Tried to,” Gladio says. “He was dead to the world, though. He didn’t wake up when I shouted, and he sure as shit didn’t stir when Martina started shaking him. That was weird, too, but I chalked it up to him being a heavy sleeper.”  
  
“Did you go outside, Gladdy?” Iris prompts.  
  
“Yeah, ‘course. Martina kept harassing me to go look, so I grabbed the lantern and unzipped the flap. I could see the embers of the fire across the haven, throwing a little bit of light on the other tents. But I felt like something really bad was gonna happen if I went out there. I must’ve hesitated, ‘cause Martina shoved my ass and I went sprawling on the haven floor.”  
  
“Evidently, you weren’t killed on the spot,” Ignis says dryly.  
  
“Nah,” Gladio says. “Actually, I didn’t see anything out there. Couldn’t hear the scratching sound anymore, either. I walked around the tent and shined the lantern into the woods just to make sure, but there was nothing. I told Martina so. She didn’t seem convinced, but she lay down anyway, and as soon as I turned the lantern off, the scratching started up again. Didn’t get any sleep after that, and neither did Martina. We huddled next to each other for the rest of the night.”  
  
“What do you think it was?” Prompto asks.  
  
Gladio shrugs, running a hand through his hair. “Beats me. When dawn came, we asked around, but no one heard any scratching at their tents. I just chalked it up to my imagination ‘cause that was the simplest explanation.” As if it’s an afterthought, he adds, “Martina quit the Crownsguard a couple of days later. Never heard from her again.”  
  
They’re all quiet for a moment. Then they jump when plastic crackles and Prompto pulls a handful of graham cracker out of the box in his lap. Iris laughs a little nervously, hugging herself.  
  
“Maybe that’s enough for tonight,” Gladio says.  
  
Iris shakes her head, though. “Nuh-uh. I wanna hear another one. Prompto?” She looks at him hopefully.  
  
“Uhh…” Prompto scratches his head. “I don’t really have any stories like Gladio’s.”  
  
“Come on, Prom, everyone knows at least one ghost story,” Noct says.  
  
Prompto lifts one of his shoulders in a half shrug, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “I guess I could tell the one about my neighbour.”  
  
“Your neighbour?” Noct echoes. “You never told me anything about your neighbour.”  
  
“Yeah, I just wanted to forget it ever happened. But now’s as good a time as any to tell it, right?”  
  
“Prom,” Noct begins, “you don’t have to—”  
  
“It’s fine, seriously. I probably shouldn’t have kept it bottled up for so long.” Prompto pops a cracker into his mouth and chews, lost in thought. “When I was growing up, we lived on the south side of Insomnia for a few years. I think I was about ten or eleven. An old lady named Mrs. Valens lived with her adult son in the house next door. She was pretty quiet and kept to herself a lot. I’d say hi whenever I saw her in the yard, but I don’t think she even knew my name.  
  
“One morning, about a year after we moved in, I saw an ambulance pull up to Mrs. Valens’ house and wheel someone away under a white sheet. My parents wouldn’t tell me what was going on, but I overheard them talking about it in the kitchen that night. Turns out Mrs. Valens’ son died of a drug overdose in her basement.”  
  
“That’s sad,” Iris says.  
  
“Yeah. Guess he had a lot of problems.” Prompto shrugs and eats another graham cracker before he continues. “My parents brought her some casseroles and went to her son’s funeral, but they tried to shelter me from it. I didn’t think about it much, until the doorbell rang a couple of nights later when I was home alone. I went to answer it and found Mrs. Valens on our doorstep. Her arm was bleeding, like she’d been attacked by a really big cat.”  
  
“Something tells me a feline wasn’t the culprit,” Ignis says.  
  
“Dude, she said a ghost did it,” Prompto says.  
  
Noct snorts, pulling his feet up onto his chair to sit cross-legged. “Sounds like she had some problems of her own.”  
  
“Yeah, I thought she was pretty crazy,” Prompto says. “But I let her stay in our kitchen until my dad got home.”  
  
“You _let_ her _in_?” Iris screeches.  
  
Prompto scratches the back of his neck. “She was just a sad old lady.”  
  
“Yeah, but…”  
  
“She was already in the house when she said it, and I couldn’t exactly ask her to leave, y’know?” Prompto closes the box of graham crackers and sets it aside, brushing crumbs off his t-shirt. “Anyway, I made her some tea and helped her wash the cuts. I figured that was the least I could do. I tried to get her to talk, but she didn’t say much. When my dad got home, she started in with all the ghost stuff again, but he didn’t believe her. He walked her home and did a sweep of her house and that was that. I forgot about it for a few days.”  
  
“How the heck could you forget about _that_?” Iris asks.  
  
“My parents were gone a lot back then,” Prompto says, the flames glimmering in the depths of his eyes. “Thinking about it freaked me out, so I tried not to. I was still scared when I had to be home alone at night, but it sort of faded to the back of my mind.”  
  
“Prom…” Noct starts to say.  
  
Prompto shakes his head and forges on. “Anyway, things were quiet for a few days—until suddenly they weren’t.” He glances over at Iris, his lips quirking into a half-smile. “You ready for this, Iris?”  
  
Iris bounces impatiently where she’s sitting. “Yes! I’m in sooooo much suspense right now!”  
  
“Well, about a week later, I was doing my homework in my bedroom when I started hearing all these crazy noises from next door.”  
  
“What kind of noises?” Iris asks.  
  
“Shrieking and banging, mostly,” Prompto says, “like a couple of daemons were going apeshit on each other over there.”  
  
“Sounds pretty wild,” Gladio says.  
  
“It was,” Prompto agrees. “My parents weren’t home, and I was freaking out. Seriously, dude, I started thinking about what my dad said, that maybe she really was crazy after all. I was scared she’d come over again and try to get in the house.”  
  
“Did she?” Noct presses.  
  
“No. I mean, not at first. I crawled under my bed and lay there with my ears covered, humming the theme song for Justice Monsters Five.”  
  
“Ah, yes,” Ignis says lightly, “if you can’t see them, they can’t see you. Sound logic.”  
  
Prompto flashes an awkward grin. “Yeah, but hey, it worked! The noises stopped after about fifteen minutes. I lay there with my heart pounding for another five before I had the courage to get out from under the bed.”  
  
“So did you find out what all the noise was about?” Iris asks eagerly.  
  
“Kinda. I was halfway down the stairs when, BAM!” he shouts, punching his palm with the opposite fist. Iris startles, giving a little shriek. “Someone started banging on our front door—like, seriously hammering it. I froze again, so scared I thought I was gonna barf, until it stopped. I crept the rest of the way down the stairs and crawled to the front window to look outside, but I couldn’t see anyone on the front step.  
  
“That’s when the banging started at the back door. I turned off the front hall light, crawled to the kitchen, and turned that light off, too. I sat cowering between the fridge and the counter, watching the door shaking on its hinges.”  
  
“Was it your neighbour?” Noct asks.  
  
“Yeah, I think so,” Prompto says. “I mean, I didn’t think it was a ghost or anything. That would’ve been nuts, right?” He chuckles nervously. “Anyway, everything finally went quiet out back. I kept expecting her to start banging on the front door again, but it was quiet there, too. I started breathing a little more easily. My curiosity got the better of me, and I figured I should take a look outside, just to get an idea of what the heck was going on.”  
  
“Prompto, nooo!” Iris moans, covering her eyes with her hands.  
  
“So, like…there was this walkway between our two houses that connected the front yard to the backyard, right? Our bathroom on the main floor looked out onto it. I knew I’d be able to see into her house from there, so I climbed on the toilet to take a peek.” Prompto cups his chin in his hand, thinking back. “I could see that all the lights in Mrs. Valens’ house were blazing. I had a good view into her kitchen, too. Every single cupboard was open—seriously, even the drawers—and there was stuff all over the floor, like flour and broken eggs and forks. It was crazy.”  
  
Gladio snorts. “Yeah, sounds like she was off her rocker.”  
  
“Maybe,” Prompto agrees, “but it still freaked me out pretty bad. You know that feeling when your heart’s pounding so hard, it’s like it’s in your throat? It was like that. I was just…frozen on the toilet, waiting for something to happen.”  
  
“And did it?” Iris says eagerly.  
  
“‘Course it did. Something slammed against the window all of a sudden. It scared the crap out of me. I slipped and fell off the toilet, smashing the lid of the tank all over the floor. I could hear Mrs. Valens outside, screaming bloody murder that her son was haunting her. She kept beating her fists against the window like she was trying to break in.”  
  
“That’s pretty messed up,” Noct says.  
  
“Tell me about it. I scrambled upstairs and hid in the back of my closet until my parents came home.”  
  
“Did you ever find out what happened?” Iris asks.  
  
Prompto shakes his head again. “Nah. I never mentioned it to my parents. I stayed at the library to do my homework on nights I knew my parents would be working late. She never bothered me again, but the police found her dead in her basement three weeks later. Apparently she hung herself down there, in the same place her son died.” He pauses before adding: “That’s what the other kids on my street said, anyway. Dunno how true it was.”  
  
An uncomfortable silence falls, and a breeze rustles the leaves in the trees ringing their campsite. Somewhere in the darkness, too distant to be a threat, a daemon howls.  
  
“Did your new neighbours ever mention a ghost in the house?” Ignis asks.  
  
Prompto waves a hand dismissively. “Nah, but we didn’t talk to any of our neighbours after Mrs. Valens. A new family moved in not long after she died. They only stayed for two months. The family after them lasted three weeks.”  
  
“Think the ghosts drove ‘em away?” Gladio asks.  
  
“Couldn’t say. My parents eventually moved us to a different part of town, and I don’t know what became of the place. We drove by once, a few years later, and it looked empty. Maybe Mrs. Valens’ son really was there all along…” Prompto looks at each of them in turn, the firelight flickering in the depths of his eyes. “…Or maybe Mrs. Valens just went nuts and left some bad mojo in the place. Guess we’ll never know.”  
  
The fire crackles. Prompto opens the box of graham crackers again and, finding it empty, sets it aside with a sigh.  
  
“I’m sorry, Prompto,” Iris says. “That’s a lot for a little kid to go through.”  
  
“Hey, things happen,” Prompto says, shooting her a reassuring smile. “Sometimes really bad, scary things. Just gotta find a way to stay positive. I mean, that’s how I try to look at it, anyway.” He places his palms on his knees and looks at Ignis. “That’s all I’ve got, though. Your turn, Igster.”  
  
“Must I?” Ignis says with a sigh.  
  
“Yes!” Iris says, clapping her hands together. “Everyone has to tell a story. No excuses.”  
  
“Oh, all right.” Ignis cleans his glasses on the hem of his shirt before sliding them back into place. “Like Gladio and Prompto, I, too, have had a personal encounter with the unexplained. I hesitate, however, to blame the phenomenon on ghosts. One day, science may provide—”  
  
“Just tell the story, Iggy,” Gladio says.  
  
“Very well.” Ignis clears his throat and scoots his chair a little closer to the fire. The flames illuminate his face, deepening the grooves between his eyes as he frowns. “You are all familiar with my propensity to work at all hours. Usually, I take my laptop home and work from my couch, but on this particular night, I remained at the Citadel well after the rest of the administrative staff had departed. I was behind on a sensitive report due to His Majesty the following morning and couldn’t risk getting too comfortable at home and falling asleep.”  
  
“How late were you there?” Noct asks.  
  
“The incident in question occurred shortly before one in the morning,” Ignis says. “I was alone in my office on the twenty-third floor of the eastern tower. A security guard had come by just after midnight, but he was the only other soul I saw up there.  
  
“I had turned off the overhead lights and was working by the glow of my desk lamp. It was so quiet that, as they say, you could hear a pin drop. The only sound was the clicking of my laptop keys.” His frown deepens, like he’s trying to summon the details of that night. “As I sat there, rereading the paragraph I had just written, I heard footsteps in the hall, coming toward my office from the direction of the elevator.”  
  
Iris hugs her knees closer to herself. “Was it the security guard?”  
  
“At first, I thought so,” Ignis says with a nod. “I quickly realized, however, that I hadn’t heard the chime that sounds when the elevator opens onto the floor.”  
  
Prompto laughs nervously. “You sure you weren’t so focused on work you missed it, Igster?”  
  
“I’m afraid not.” Ignis adjusts his glasses again. “If I heard the footsteps, I’m certain I would have heard the chime.  
  
“In any case, the footsteps halted abruptly just before they reached my door. I consider myself a rational man, but I was overcome by an inexplicable sensation of dread,” Ignis says, absently running a hand down his sleeve, smoothing the fabric. “The hair on my arms was standing on end. I could feel my heart in my throat. I wanted to get up and close the door, but found myself incapable of moving. I was frozen by fear, unable to tear my eyes from the open doorway.”  
  
A log cracks and shifts in the fire, sending a shower of sparks into the air. Iris squeals and grabs for Prompto in the chair beside her, fingers digging into his forearm.  
  
“Okay, that’s enough,” Gladio says gruffly. “She’s never gonna sleep at this rate.”  
  
“No, I’m fine, Gladdy. I was just startled,” Iris insists, though she doesn’t let go of Prompto. “What happened next, Ignis?”  
  
Ignis looks at Gladio questioningly, as if asking for permission. After a moment’s hesitation, Gladio shakes his head and waves at Ignis to go on.  
  
“Somehow, I found my voice and asked who was there,” Ignis goes on. “There was no answer—only a heavy, unbearable silence from the hallway. This may sound ridiculous, but I felt like someone was standing there, just beyond my line of sight.”  
  
“Dude, I would’ve had a heart attack,” Prompto says.  
  
“I thought I might as well,” Ignis admits, “because if someone truly was standing outside my door, they should have cast a shadow. But there was none.”  
  
An owl hoots in the trees. The firelight reflects off Ignis’s glasses, the glare obscuring his eyes from his rapt audience.  
  
“I eventually worked up the courage to look into the hall,” he says. “It was empty, of course, but the heavy feeling that I was not alone did not abate. Rather, it intensified. The silence in the hallway was oppressive. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck rising, warning me of danger.  
  
“‘Who’s there?’ I called, feeling simultaneously ridiculous and apprehensive of a response. There was, of course, no response. At least, not a verbal one.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Iris whispered.  
  
Ignis looks at her. “The fluorescent light nearest the bank of elevators at the other end of the hall flickered out.” He pauses, his gaze moving from her to Gladio. “Then the next one went out…and the one after that.”  
  
Gladio folds his arms over his chest, settling back in his chair uneasily. “Sounds like the security guard was trying to give you a hint to go home.”  
  
Ignis smiles grimly. “Perhaps, though it wasn’t the first possibility that leapt to my mind. As each light went out, the darkness inching closer and closer, my apprehension turned to terror. In that moment, I knew, with crystal clarity, that some malevolent thing inhabited the darkness, and it would do me harm if I gave it the opportunity.”  
  
“So what did you do?” Noct asks, leaning forward in his chair.  
  
“I fled,” Ignis says. “There was a stairwell at the opposite end of the hallway. I thought I would be safe if I reached it. As I ran, I could hear the hum of the fluorescents extinguishing behind me, one by one, faster and faster, the darkness chasing me like a bloodhound that’s caught the scent of a rabbit in the brush. I dared not think of what would happen if it overtook me.  
  
“When I reached the door, I shouldered the push bar, but it wouldn’t open. The mechanism was stuck. I rattled it desperately, chancing a glance down the hall, and found the darkness closer now, mere feet from where I stood, gaping wider and wider, like the maw of some hungry creature of the deep. I gave a cry of despair and threw myself against the push bar, willing the door to open with every atom of my body.  
  
“And then it did. I fell through into the concrete stairwell, hardly finding my feet before I was scrambling down, too frightened to look back.”  
  
He pauses, glancing up from the flames. The others are watching him, hanging onto his every word, Iris still clutching at Prompto. Noct’s face looks serious, and Gladio’s forehead glistens with sweat in the firelight, like he was the one running instead of Ignis.  
  
“What happened next?” Prompto asks.  
  
“I hurried down all twenty-three flights of stairs to the lobby,” Ignis says. “The light was a welcome relief, but I didn’t truly feel safe until I reached the reception desk. I found the security guard there, reclined in his chair, eating a jelly doughnut and flipping through a lewd magazine.  
  
“I think he was shocked to see me. He put down both doughnut and magazine and asked me what was the matter. With an unsteady voice, I told him what I had seen upstairs. I hardly remember what I said. I wonder if it made any sense to him. Perhaps it all sounded like gibberish.” Ignis shakes his head. “At any rate, he dug his baton and flashlight out from under the desk and accompanied me back upstairs.”  
  
“You went back up?!” Iris shrieks.  
  
“Talk about brass balls, Iggy,” Gladio says.  
  
“I was in a bit of a daze, to be honest,” Ignis says, “and as I began to calm down, I convinced myself I had to confront what I had seen. I kept telling myself there must be some rational explanation.  
  
“I put my hands in my pockets to stop them from shaking as we rode back up, listening to the pings that marked each floor like they were the countdown to my doom. The security guard didn’t speak; neither did I. Half of me was terrified of what we’d find when the elevator doors slid open. I kept asking myself, _What if the darkness rushes in and takes us?_ ”  
  
“But it didn’t,” Noct says. “Obviously.”  
  
“Indeed, no,” Ignis says. “The doors opened and everything was as it should be. The fluorescent lights were all lit, humming as they had been before I heard those footsteps in the hall. The security guard did a sweep of the floor, but found nothing amiss. He stayed with me while I retrieved my things from my office, and then I went home to finish my work.” He laughs softly, looking down at his hands. “Well, that was my intention. I had a stiff drink and slept with all the lights on instead. I never stayed at the office past midnight again.”  
  
No one speaks. Another gust of wind gutters the flames, pushing the empty box of graham crackers across the haven floor. The night seems more oppressive now, more dangerous, inhabited by entities that have no name.  
  
“I always used to get the creeps when I was at the Citadel late,” Gladio finally admits. “Dunno what it was. Maybe ‘cause the place was so big and empty after hours.”  
  
Noct shrugs. “I never got that feeling. It was always just…home.” He glances up at Ignis. “What do you think it was, Specs?”  
  
“After some time had passed, I began to attribute it to my imagination,” Ignis says. “I’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours at that time. Perhaps I hallucinated, or fell asleep at my desk and had a bad dream.”  
  
“But you weren’t asleep,” Iris says.  
  
“No,” Ignis agrees softly, after a moment’s pause, “I wasn’t.” Another silence falls, but before it can lengthen, Ignis claps his hands together and rises from his chair. “Well, then, I think it’s time we turned in for the night, don’t you? It’s getting rather late, and we have an early start.”  
  
On any other evening, he might have received arguments, but tonight, everyone moves from the fireside to the tent with a sober resignation. Ignis tidies up the campsite, folding up the chairs and piling them next to the cooking equipment, before joining them.  
  
Noct is already burrowed in his sleeping bag with his eyes closed; Prompto lies on his belly, reading a magazine by the light of his mobile phone; Iris is curled up in her own sleeping bag next to Gladio, who lies on his back with an arm behind his head, staring up at the ceiling of the tent. He glances at Ignis and smiles before closing his eyes as well.  
  
Ignis toes off his shoes. “Goodnight, everyone,” he says. “Sleep well.”  
  
He receives a chorus of murmured goodnights in response as he settles down next to Noct, folding his glasses and placing them on the canvas floor beside his pillow. Eventually, Prompto shuts off his phone and rolls onto his back, and a deep silence overtakes the tent. Ignis is just drifting off when a scratching sound on canvas snaps him awake again. For a moment, he thinks he’s the only one who heard it, until Iris squeals in fear.  
  
“Will you quit it, Prompto?” Gladio yells.  
  
“I’m not doing anything!”  
  
Ignis sighs. “Highness, it isn’t funny.”  
  
“Sorry, sorry…” Noct yawns, burrowing deeper into his sleeping bag. “Couldn’t help myself…”  
  
Gladio grumbles, the scratching stops, and everyone settles back into their sleeping bags. Soon, Gladio begins to snore, followed by a deep, whistling breathing that could be Noct or Prompto. Ignis lets it lull him to sleep.  
  
And outside, the fire burns low through the night, keeping the daemons at bay.


End file.
